For six decades, and at the center of various postwar movements, Martial Raysse has explored the allure of artifice, façade, and consumerism through rigorous and often humorous experimentation with media and form. Born in 1936 in Vallauris, France, Raysse studied literature at the University of Nice and attended the city’s School of Decorative Arts. In Paris in 1960, alongside Arman and Yves Klein, he became one of the nine signers of the Nouveau Réalisme manifesto. Making assemblages of everyday commercial objects, Raysse developed his concept of “Vision Hygiene,” wherein his output was meant to possess “the serene self-evidence of mass-produced refrigerators.” He spent the 1960s in New York with the Beat milieu and in Los Angeles, experimenting with film and incorporating neon into his paintings (High Voltage, 1965). His aesthetic turned to Pop’s engagement with appropriation, excess, and surface. The series Made in Japan (1963–65), including his seminal La Grande Odalisque (1964), features imagery from master paintings rendered in brilliant color, gaudy fabrics, and plastic objects. Raysse returned to Paris in 1968 to join the student-led protests. Discouraged by the movement’s failures, he declared a rupture with the art world in 1970. In 1973, he moved to Ussy-sur-Marne, France, and committed to painting enigmatic portraits, landscapes, and allegorical frieze compositions.

Raysse’s work has been exhibited worldwide since the 1960s. Major retrospectives of his work have been organized by the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1965); Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris (1992; traveled to Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien and Palais Liechtenstein, Vienna; Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, Spain); Centre Pompidou, Paris (1981, 2014); and Palazzo Grassi, Venice (2015). He participated in the Venice Biennales of 1966, 1976, and 1982. Raysse is represented in such collections as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Tate, London; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and Museum Ludwig, Cologne, among others. In 2014, he was awarded the Praemium Imperiale for Painting by the Japan Art Association.